When Spending is Saving

Living sustainably is a balancing act.  Often, I prioritize financial saving over other kinds of saving, but there comes a point at which is it unrealistic not to take the big picture into consideration.

Take our picture window, for instance.  Our house was built in 1965, meaning it is 50 years old this year.  And when we bought it, it had the original window in it -- it still did as late as last week.

The old window was single pane glass in a series of frames that had seen better days.  The wind leaked through the cracks, and we lost a ton of heating and air conditioning energy through that window.  We knew we needed to replace it.

Unfortunately, no company was willing to reconstruct the original window in a way that maintained the architectural integrity of the window for the house (including the angle of the "lights" and the cross pieces on the inside), or they still wouldn't maintain the architecture but wanted to charge us north of $10,000 to do the job.

Luckily, we found a company who would do the job for less than a third of that.  They offered master carpenters, good materials, and a great work ethic.  Our window is now energy efficient and architecturally compatible with the rest of the 1965 house.  We are no longer wasting energy, but we didn't waste money for the job.

If you are in the Dayton, Ohio, area, may I recommend Window Depot and Addis Construction.  Tell them FC&G sent you!